1. Field of the Invention
An apparatus consistent with the present invention relates to a microwave oven and, more particularly, to a microwave oven capable of simply achieving mounting of door-side hinge members adapted to hingeably couple a door to an oven body, while preventing microwaves from leaking to the exterior.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a microwave oven is a cooking appliance in which microwaves emitted from a magnetron are irradiated into a cooking chamber to change repeatedly the arrangement of water molecules in food contained in the cooking chamber, thereby causing the food to be cooked by inter-frictional heat of those water molecules.
Such a microwave oven includes an oven body partitioned into a cooking chamber and an electric element chamber. The electric element chamber receives a magnetron for emitting microwaves in accordance with an oscillation operation thereof, and irradiating the microwaves into the cooking chamber, and a high-voltage transformer for applying high voltage to the magnetron.
A door adapted to open and close the cooking chamber is hingeably coupled to the oven body in front of the cooking chamber. For the hinge coupling of the door, a pair of body-side hinge members respectively provided with hinge holes are provided on one side edge of an opened front end portion of the oven body at upper and lower positions thereof. Also, a pair of door-side hinge members are provided on the door at positions corresponding to those of the body-side hinge members, respectively. The door-side hinge members have hinge shafts adapted to be hingeably coupled with the hinge holes of the body-side hinge members, respectively.
The door includes a door frame centrally provided with a transparent portion, and adapted to define the appearance of the door, a shield plate mounted to an inner surface of the door frame, and adapted to prevent leakage of microwaves, and a cover adapted to cover a region where the shield plate is mounted to the door frame.
The shield plate is provided, at a peripheral edge thereof, with choke slits for shielding leakage of microwaves. The door-side hinge members are coupled to upper and lower portions of one side edge of the shield plate, respectively.
Each door-side hinge member has a hinge shaft support portion, from which the hinge shaft of the door-side hinge member extends, and an extension extending, in a bent state, from an end of the hinge shaft support portion toward a front surface of the shield plate. The extension is welded, at a desired portion thereof, to the front surface of the shield plate, so that the door-side hinge member is fixedly mounted to the shield plate.
When the door-side hinge members are coupled to the body-side hinge members such that the hinge shafts are fitted in the hinge holes, respectively, the door is hingeably coupled to the front end of the door body.
In such a conventional microwave oven, however, there is a drawback in that the door-side hinge members must be individually welded to the shield plate, so that there is an increase in the number of welding processes causing an increased difficulty in mounting of the door-side hinge members.
Furthermore, a step is formed between the shield plate and each door-side hinge member coupled thereto. Due to this step, the front surface of the shield plate cannot come into close contact with the inner surface of the door frame, so that a gap is formed between the door frame and the shield plate. Where such a gap is large, there may be a problem in that microwaves leak to the exterior through the gap.